Syria administrative boundaries map: 14 governorates, 62 districts, 272 sub-districts and 5,713 communities

Where are the boundaries of every governorate, district and sub-district in Syria, where is each community and how many people lived there?

Four administrative levels with Arabic and English names and unified codes, plus 5,713 communities as polygons and points, with the 2004 census population of every unit (17,381,515 people). Arabic names are re-encoded correctly and areas are computed on an equal-area projection.

Who it is for

Anyone doing GIS work on Syria: students on graduation projects, organisations assessing needs per sub-district, engineers drafting project plans, and researchers joining statistical tables to the map through unified codes.

Method: what we add to the raw data

• Arabic names of governorates, districts and sub-districts were re-encoded: they were stored as Windows-1256 read as Latin-1, showing "ÅÏáÈ" instead of "إدلب".
• Field names were unified across the four levels (gov_*, dist_*, nahia_*, comm_*) so layers and tables join directly.
• The newer administrative coding was followed: the four Al-Qadmus sub-districts in Tartus form their own district (SY1006) instead of sitting under Baniyas, giving 62 districts.
• 44 coastal and border sub-districts were extended by 146.0 km² to the actual coastline: the original coast was generalised up to 230 m inland, leaving the centres of Tartus, Jableh, Baniyas and Ras al-Ain outside every sub-district.
• Six polygons with invalid geometry (self-intersections) that broke dissolve and clip operations were repaired.
• Each unit's area was computed in km² on an equal-area projection, not taken from the original area field.
• The 2004 census population was summed from communities up to sub-districts, districts and governorates, with density for each level.
• Every community was located spatially: 48 community polygons fall in a sub-district other than the one named for them and 1 fall outside all sub-districts; the in_named_nahia field flags this per row.

Product details

Spatial layers

• governorates — polygons, 14: Governorates with unit counts, population and area
• districts — polygons, 62: Districts
• subdistricts — polygons, 272: Sub-districts
• communities — polygons, 5,713: Communities: the inhabited footprint of each
• community_points — points, 5,713: Communities as points

Tables

• D078_admin_hierarchy.csv — 5,713 rows: Full administrative hierarchy of every community with codes, names and population
• D078_subdistricts_summary.csv — 272 rows: Sub-district summary: communities, population, area and density

Limitations

• Population is from the 2004 census, the last full census. It does not reflect displacement and migration since 2011; for current population see the Syria population 2025 product.
• Community polygons represent the inhabited footprint (total 5,466 km²), not administrative boundaries covering all land.
• 2 sub-districts in Quneitra have no communities in the layer, as they lie in the occupied Golan.
• 2 communities have no Arabic name in the original and were left as recorded.
• Boundaries are approximate administrative limits for planning and analysis, not certified cadastral boundaries.

FAQ

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Commercial use is allowed for you and the organisation you buy for; resale or redistribution is not.